Amateur Gardening

“Have you seen the first snowdrops yet? I am fascinated by these delicate-looking flowers, which are far hardier then they appear. There is just something magical about them, and clearly I am not alone in thinking this, for they have been venerated by the ancient Greeks and viewed as a symbol of purity by the early Christians – hardly surprising, then, that we see so many in our churchyards. I am also fascinated by the devotion of Galanthophiles: people who are obsessed with collecting rare snowdrops and often paying a small fortune for them. It’s funny how certain flowers have an emotional effect on us while others do not. I haven’t seen my first snowdrops yet, but I know it will be a special moment when I do…” Contact us: Subscriptions: 0330 333…

I SPENT an extremely satisfying day in the greenhouse during the Christmas break, cleaning the glass and surfaces, clearing out dead plants and last year’s pots and labels and generally getting the structure ready for the year ahead. It is so important to start the gardening year with a clean greenhouse, as diseases and pests will run riot in warmth and humidity where there are lots of plants in close proximity. You can use strong disinfectants such as Jeyes Fluid and fumigation candles to do this, but I prefer to use hot water, elbow grease and household cleaner or an ecological disinfectant such as Ecoleaf, Ecofective Natural Anti-Bacterial Multi-Surface Sanitiser or Bio D Home and Garden Cleaner. Wash down shelves and surfaces and keep the glass clean to let maximum light onto overwintering…

1 Give plants a healthy start by washing surfaces and shelves with hot water and the disinfectant of your choice. 2 Good ventilation keeps mould and disease at bay. Keep the door and windows shut when it’s cold though. 3 A warm greenhouse is a haven for pests such as aphids and snails, so check regularly and remove them. 4 We lost a few panes from the greenhouse so now I make sure they are firmly secured with extra clips. 5 Make sure tubers and corms are still healthy. Discard any that have rotted or feel soft when squeezed. 6 The early weeks of the year are often the coldest, so make sure your greenhouse heater works properly. Using your mini greenhouse Mould attack MOST of the plants I’m overwintering undercover survived the bitterly cold spell just before…

HERBS are an asset to any garden, and not just because we all use them so much in the kitchen. Sage, rosemary and thyme are hardy evergreens, so they add colour and structure to the garden right through the year. Fennel, though not evergreen, produces elegant, tall stems with outspread seedheads that feed the birds and look exquisite when iced by frost. Do take care with fennel though, it self-seeds easily and can quickly invade your borders. Hyssop is another attractive perennial herb. It loses its leaves in winter and needs cutting back in autumn to keep it shapely, but its flowers are a striking indigo and are attractive to pollinators. This week I have been taking cuttings of Salvia officinalis, the common sage that is used so much in cookery. Its grey-green leaves and…

BEAUTIFUL, exotic lilies can be planted any time between autumn and April, so if you have some unplanted bulbs in the shed, think about getting them in. They do well in pots as well as in the soil and right now, when the ground is wet and cold, I’d consider growing them in pots because they are prone to rotting in chilly, saturated ground. Keep planted pots somewhere frost-free until night time temperatures are reliably above freezing, then harden off the shooting plant and move them out. Asiatic lilies are among the easiest to grow and the earliest to flower. They do best in well-drained soil in full sun or very light shade, as too little sun will weaken their stems. For the best results in a container, place a layer of crocks in…

I HAD a bit of a calamity with our hippeastrum last month. I completely forgot it was resting in our unheated greenhouse and when the very cold snap arrived just before Christmas it completely did for the plant’s regenerating leaves. So I brought inside and repotted it and it is now on a warm, light shelf and will hopefully grow and flower as well as it did last year when its flower stem grew as tall as me! Repotting the hippeastrum (also called amaryllis) was something I had on my to-do list anyway, as they need fresh compost and a slightly larger container each year to keep them performing well. Most other houseplants need very little care through winter as the reduced light levels sends them into a dormant phase and they stop…